KATHMANDU, JUNE 18
The Upendra Yadav-Baburam Bhattarai faction of the Janata Samajbadi Party-Nepal today submitted a petition to the Election Commission seeking recognition as the authentic JSP-N.
The Yadav-Bhattarai faction has claimed that since majority of the 51 members of the executive committee of the party were with the faction, the poll panel should recognise it as the authentic JSP-N. The move of the Yadav-Bhattarai faction of the JSP-N comes days after the poll panel refused to give validity to the punitive action taken by the JSP-N Co-chairmen Upendra Yadav and Mahantha Thakur against each other.
The Yadav-Bhattarai faction expelled nine ministers in the KP Sharma Oli-led government from the party yesterday.
The nine ministers who were expelled from the party are: Rajkishor Yadav, Sharat Singh Bhandari, Ekbal Miya, Umashankar Argariya, Bimal Prasad Srivastav, Anil Kumar Jha, Chanda Chaudhary, Chandra Kanta Chaudhary, and Renuka Gurung.
A few days ago, the Yadav-Bhattarai faction had also removed Thakur, Rajendra Mahato, Laxman Lal Karna, and Sarvendranath Shukla from the party. Thakur, on the other hand, had removed Yadav from the party.
The Yadav-Bhattarai faction has accused Thakur of ignoring party meetings and promoting factional activities in the party. It says it is facing difficulties in running the party as the EC had not recognised it as an authentic party.
Senior Advocate Mithilesh Kumar Singh, who is the chief of the Law Department of the JSP-N, said his faction was confident that the poll panel would recognise the Yadav-Bhattarai faction as the authentic JSP-N, as 31 out of 51 members of the party's executive committee were with the faction.
A version of this article appears in the print on June 19, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
